Cloud technology has been hailed as the game changer of our age, and rightly so. The benefits of flexibility, collaboration efficiency, and reduced IT costs have not only given rise to successful businesses such as Netflix and Airtel Payments Bank, but are also key to business resilience during the pandemic.
It is no surprise that Asia Pacific’s public cloud spending is expected to reach US$124 billion by 2025, and into our second year of the pandemic, the growth remained strong at a 28.8% year-on-year rate for 2021 alone. Innovation and risk management were also cited as the major driver for cloud adoption, per BCG-AWS survey of eight markets in the region.
But as companies migrate to the cloud, have their on-premises infrastructure become obsolete? Can companies completely do away with investing in their on-premise hardware and software and bring everything to the cloud?
We can all agree that not all data belong to the public cloud. There is data that we like to keep closer to the organisation and “behind the firewall”. In fact, we are increasingly seeing many enterprises choosing a hybrid approach to reap the benefits of both the public cloud and on-premise infrastructure.
The promise of a hybrid cloud
One of the largest challenges in cloud and data management is that moving data around can be expensive and sometimes relatively slow - such as moving data between the cloud and end-user devices, especially if the data sits on different markets and on different platforms. The issue of latency cannot always be eliminated, even if the data is geographically hosted close to its end users. The higher the volume of data, the slower it can be to move data into or out of cloud.
In addition, some applications are simply not suited for the cloud due to the lack of interoperability. If a specific app operates heavily in conjunction with other apps within the organisation, that specific app and its database must also run on-premise. Apps that are built to specifically run on-premise would require additional time, effort, and costs to make them run in the cloud.
Moreover, many companies today are required to comply with regulations over data use and data privacy, such as the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) in Singapore. Many governments require that personal customer data is required to be geographically hosted in the same location where they are utilised.
Many multi-national corporations have turned to a hybrid cloud strategy to enable hybrid multi-cloud computing and dynamic movement of data. For instance, AstraZeneca, the global biopharmaceutical company that brought us the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, is speeding the discovery of life-changing treatments with a hybrid cloud approach. With a data fabric that spans across various infrastructures, researchers can access the right data, when they need it.
Bringing together the best of both worlds
We have seen how bringing all data and applications to the public cloud, or “lift-and-shift”, might prove impractical, with potential challenges to latency, interoperability and regulations. We believe data should be able to move around the enterprise easily – to the right person, at the right time, at an affordable cost. This is key if we are to take advantage of all the wisdom that comes from digitalisation and becoming data-centric organisations.
In these ever-challenging times, robust data management and governance through a hybrid cloud approach take centre stage. Organisations can turn to a data management partner with the best management tools, product portfolio and hyperscaler partnerships who can guide them in unlocking the full power of their data and a hybrid multi-cloud strategy.
